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Strike Aside, A Bad Year For the Networks

As the May “sweeps” month begins and the networks await their ratings fates, one fact is already clear: this has been a dismal season for broadcast television.

Every network, save for Fox, appears poised to post audience losses for the full season, with CBS and the CW suffering the steepest declines. Ratings were down before the crippling writers’ strike, and this spring’s return of new scripted shows has only moved the needle slightly in the networks’ favors.

The numbers reflect the continuing audience erosion for the broadcast networks. Americans are still watching just as much TV, but they’re not watching ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC the way they used to.

Bill Gorman, the editor of TV By The Numbers, a Web site that analyzes television ratings, said all the networks have shed viewers compared to last year’s TV season. Excluding the week of the Super Bowl, which boosted the ratings for Fox, even that network would be down 3 percent for the year, Mr. Gorman said.

For several weeks in March, 19 percent fewer viewers were watching CBS this year than had watched during the same weeks last year. One in five viewers were gone. Since scripted shows have returned, CBS has drawn some of those viewers back, but the network still recorded 18.69 percent fewer viewers for the season to date as of the week ending April 20 than it did at the same point in the season in 2007. (Granted, CBS telecast the Super Bowl in 2007, boosting the network’s numbers for the season. Excluding the Super Bowl week, CBS would be down about 13 percent, Mr. Gorman said.)

NBC has fared worse than ABC so far this season, although the numbers are shifting. “NBC began this season very badly compared to last year, falling almost 18 percent behind last season’s viewership before the strike began,” Mr. Gorman said. “However, since the strike began in early December, it has consistently improved versus last season, very strongly during the strike period, but continuing since the strike ended.”

ABC, on the other hand, started the season strong, but has lost ground since the strike began. In the most recent week, ABC was down around 8 percent compared to the same week last year. The network “seems on track to lose more viewership compared to last year than NBC,” which was down about 10 percent year-over-year last week, Mr. Gorman said.

Of all the networks, the CW has posted the sharpest declines, down 22 percent compared to the same weeks last year. More than one in five viewers have stopped watching the CW. “They’ve done very poorly versus last year, some of that is clearly due to the strike,” Mr. Gorman said, “but the majority of the decline of it is not.”